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Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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When the voting act of 1965 was passed, it was viewed as a turning point for segregation in America. As if it described in history textbooks, it is when all forms of racism were abolished – on paper. However, it was not at all like that. Racism then had to be discreet and systems that were built on racism were never reformed and instead, instilled systematic and institutional racism. In her book, “The New Jim Crow”, Michelle Alexander speaks on the injustices she has viewed and relates them all back to the concept that racism was reformed to fit into today’s society through systems and institutions. The New Jim Crow, a novel written by Michelle Alexander, focuses on the new wave of racism seen in present day United States of America. Alexander …show more content…

In the past 40 years, drug offenses have been on the rise as a priority offense. According to Prison Policy, 1 in 5 incarcerated inmates are locked up for a drug offense. At the same time, black people make up 40% of the prison/jail population, which is more than the white population of 39%. Considering that black people only make up 13% of the nation, this disproportionate rate of black people being arrested is quite evident. Conversely, when it comes to drugs, black people are the highest demographic arrested for drug offenses, even though all races and ethnicities sell drugs at very similar rates. However, black men are arrested and charged for drug offenses at, “rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men” (Alexander, 2010). This discrepancy raises questions as to why are black men targeted for drug offenses more than all other races when black people use and sell drugs at similar rates as the other demographics. Mass incarceration stemmed from the influx of arrests made in the 1980’s and 90’s; these hordes of people put into prisons means more than just time behind …show more content…

In addition, many will claim that if black people want to make it ‘better for themselves’, that they must work harder to stay out the prison system. While that could apply, the reason that the prison system is overflowing with black bodies is that the system was designed to target black people in the first place. Often enough, cops are targeting poorer neighborhoods that are at capacity with people, most of them usually being people of color. Because of this, as stated previously, more of the arrests are of people of color. To battle this system that keeps minorities down, it must be reconstructed, eliminating racial bias throughout the court and judicial system, police officers and many others. It is a difficult task but it is an imperative task if the war on mass incarceration wants to make

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According to the article, The Drug War, Mass Incarceration, and Race “ Black people comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population,10 and are consistently documented by the U.S. government to use drugs at similar rates to people of other races.11 But black people comprise 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations,12 and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated”. Despite the fact that colored people are minorities in the country still, make up 1/3 of the people arrested because of the drug policy. The policy effective created to target the minorities by making the cocaine the main focus of the drug. “America of the poor, where, amid hopelessness and lack of education, people will suffer the worst consequences of cocaine”(Kerr, 1) which in many poor communities lived the colored minorities, this made it easier for the police officer to target and arrest the

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The foreword was written by African American political activist, Cornel West. This section begins with West calling The New Jim Crow a “secular bible for a new social media movement” (Foreword). He then goes on to talk about how although this is a sensitive subject, it is a discussion that needs to be held. He mentions how African Americans haven’t fought back hard enough against these injustices against our people, despite the efforts of freedom fighters such as Angela Davis, Marc Mauer, or Marian Wright Edelmen. West also mentions Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in reference to the topic of colorblindness and how we should be “lovestruck with each other” instead (Foreword).

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Yes, the Criminal Justice System is used for individuals of All races and cultural backgrounds. However, prisons within the United States are filled with mostly African Americans. Alexander believes that there is no coincidence between the amount of African Americans within the system and the racial issues that are constantly taking place in the U.S. The Author supports her beliefs by providing the reader with background information on when the increase in African American incarceration rates took place. In Addition, she uses real life examples to support the facts that she mentions throughout the

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Communities of color were targeted for crimes and given larger prison sentences than their white counterparts. In the Rockefeller Drug Reform of 2009, the racial disparities significantly decreased in the early periods following the reform (Parsons, Wei, Henrichson, Drucker, & Trone, 2015). Black and Hispanic individuals, in 2008 were three-times more likely than whites to receive a prison sentence; by 2010, black and Hispanic individuals were only twice as likely to be charged than whites. Although this is still an issue that needs to be addressed, it is a significant accomplishment compared to previous years. There is still said to be harmful biases in the criminal justice system (Parsons, Wei, Henrichson, Drucker, & Trone,

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

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Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

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Affirmative Action
 Reader pg. 244 “ those many in our society that are darker, poorer, more identifiably foreign will continue to suffer the poverty, marginalization, immersion and incarceration.” Statistics are staggering Racial Disparities in Incarceration African Americans constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, they are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites, what’s shocking is that one in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001 and if the trends continues one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. I am for affirmative action, as I believe that when the late President John F Kennedy signed the affirmative action on March 6th 1961,

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They also “buy into” the derogatory caricature of the criminal black man. According to the findings, there is a higher chance that black people may develop a drug or alcohol dependency as a result of these racial injustice events. Additionally, additional study is required to investigate Unnever and Gabbidon’s claim that locality and gender play a role in the relationship between racial injustices and crime.

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Race is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.

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Since the drug economy is prevalent in these communities, it makes sense for these individuals to turn to them. The final issue to address on the topic of mass incarceration of minorities is the policy change that is needed to fix the issues. First, localized policing has been a solution called for since the Black Panther Party in the 1970s. Having better control of communities could help prevent police shootings and backlash like seen in the riots in Ferguson, MO.

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Just like any national crisis experienced by a Country, America as a whole needs to unite to fix our racial hierarchy and cease the mass incarceration. The main issue of mass incarceration is overcriminalization based on race. As shown in The New Jim Crow “Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino”. The first step in solving mass incarceration is changing the view on the “War on Drugs”; the “war on Drugs” is seen as a black problem, and blaming the black community for being the root of drugs while the white race is the biggest drug user in America. So in order to fix this we need to let the supreme justice system do its job, and give people convicted of crime a fair trial.

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Studies show that all races are involved in drug crimes; white people most likely and yet African Americans are the ones being severely punished for it.1 Consequently, due to these discriminations, African Americans suffer from poor health more than White Americans do and they have a higher risk of early death.3 It is also important to note that disadvantaged minorities have a higher incarceration rate than disadvantaged whites.1 People of color have also specifically been targeted in the stop and frisk program. What was designed to increase safety only increased racial profiling. The responsibility of choosing who to stop based on suspicion was left to the police. However, it seems that race also influenced the police’s decision as minorities were targeted more than

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Numerous studies have provided different perspectives and evidence on the impact of racial inequality in the criminal justice systems, specifically how these racial inequalities affect black Americans. Lisa Miller found in The Invisible Black: Victim, “mistreatment by law enforcement, law-makers, and federalism” in the racial bias toward black Americans (2010). Pettit and Skyes in Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion, point out that black males are more likely to end up in jail (2015). A sociologist named David Garland contrived the term “mass incarceration” to explain high incarceration rates in the United States (U.S) (Pettit and Skyes 2015). Currently, the highest incarceration is among black men of 1 in 15 (Miller 2010).

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Yet another statistic found on Huffington Post stated “White Americans use drugs more than black Americans, but black people are arrested for drug possession more than three times as often as whites.” These statistics show that inequality between races is still present and

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The U.S. is now the world’s largest jailer, while drugs remain widely available and treatment resources are scarce. Not only have billions of tax dollars been wasted, but drug war spending has also resulted in the defunding of other important services (“Wasted Tax Dollars”). The number of arrests in 2014 in the U.S. for marijuana law violation was around 700,000, while around 88% of those arrests were for possession only. 57% of the people incarcerated for drugs are black or Latino, even though these groups use and sell drugs at similar rates with whites. People of color are far more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations than are whites (“Wasted Tax Dollars”).

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